“Not judging,” I say, pausing beside it. “It’s just all very ‘70s suburban housewife.”
“That sounds like judgment, asshole.”
I open the passenger door to get in the car when Cliff catches up, slightly out of breath from running. “What are you doing, Johnny? You’re leaving?”
“I told you I had somewhere to be.”
“This is ridiculous,” he says, anger edging his voice. “You need to sort out your priorities.”
“That’s a damn good idea,” I say. “Consider this my notice.”
“Your notice?”
“I’m taking a break,” I say. “From you. From this. From all of it.”
“You’re making a big mistake.”
“You think so?” I ask, looking him right in the face. “Because I think the mistake I made was trusting you.”
I get in the car, slamming the door, leaving Cliff standing on the sidewalk, fuming.
Jack starts the engine, cutting his eyes at me. “So, where to? The unemployment office?”
“Home,” I say, “and I need to get there as soon as possible, because somebody is waiting for me, and I can't disappoint her.”
The only clock in the small one-bedroom apartment glows blue from the old microwave on the kitchen counter. The numbers are fuzzy, and it often loses time, a few minutes every now and then, like it sometimes forgets to keep counting.
It reads 6:07 PM when I leave. (Yes, me. This part of the story is all mine. There's no denying it.) I’m not sure what time it really is, but around twelve hours have passed since you spoke those bitter words. It took half a day for me to gather the courage to walk out, knowing once I did, I wouldn’t be back. I spent most of those hours staring at the door, waiting for it to open, for you to walk back in, for you to tell me you didn’t mean it.
I tear a piece of paper from the back of my notebook and stare at the blank lines, lines that were meant to hold so much more of our story.
Goodbye.
That’s all I write. There are a million things I want to write, but I keep those words locked up tight. I leave the note on the kitchen counter, beside that microwave. I take only a few things, shoving some clothes and mementos in my backpack, before I go to the train station. I need time to think.
Three days later, I arrive in New York, no longer the lovesick seventeen-year-old girl that ran away with a boy all those years ago. I’m a heartbroken twenty-one-year-old woman now, one that doesn’t know where to call home.
The taxi drops me off along the curb in front of the two-story white house in Bennett Landing. I pay the driver every last penny in my pocket. I’m queasy, and exhausted, and I want to cry but the tears won’t fall.
Snow is falling, though. The world outside feels icy cold. My jacket is thin, and I'm shivering. The sun was still shining back in California.
As the taxi pulls away, the front door of the house opens. My father steps out onto the porch and stands there in silence. He’s not surprised. He knew I was coming.
“Kennedy? Is that you?” My mother bursts out of the house and hugs me. “I can’t believe you’re here!”
Her excitement makes me lightheaded. Haze coats my vision.
She drags me into the house, straight past my father, who still says nothing, yet his eyes say enough. My mother wants to chat. I just want to stop feeling like I’m about to pass out. “Can I lay down somewhere?”
“Of course, sweetheart,” she says. “You know where your room is.”
My room is just how I left it, except the bed is freshly made. They expected me, and not just on some ‘you’ll come crawling back someday’ level. Someone warned them.
I get under the covers, pulling them over my head, trying to find some warmth again. I don't want to think about who that 'someone' must be.
Another three days pass. I don’t move unless I have to. I’m sick, and I’m weak, and my mother keeps checking up on me, bringing bottles of water and forcing me to eat crackers and smoothing my hair and telling me it’ll be okay, doing all those things a mother does for her child. And I love her, and I know she does it because she loves me, but I want to scream at her, because how is it possible to love someone so unconditionally? How can she look at me and smile and be so happy that I’m here, that I exist, when she has every reason in the world to be angry for the trouble I’ve caused? All the sleepless nights she endured, all the stress and worry…
“How far along are you?” she asks that third night when she finds me curled up on the bathroom floor. Her voice is gentle as she sits down beside me.